Hormel Foods Corporation

Good morning. Thanks for joining us. Next on stage we've got Hommel Foods. With us is Jim Snee, company's CEO, who joined back in 1989, as well as Jacin Smiley, who joined as a CFO back in 2021. The company just reported third fiscal quarter results yesterday morning, outlining its thoughts on the rest of the fiscal year and so on. And with that, I'd like to kind of like introduce Jim and kick it off with the first question. So maybe just talk us through a little bit of what you've been seeing in the quarter. What do you expect for the rest of the year? Positive, negatives? A little bit just like the rundown so we understand where you're at right now.

Yeah, sure. Thanks for having us, Ben. Always great to be here. I think the biggest takeaway from our Q3 earnings call is that our underlying core business across the enterprise is really, really strong. So when we think about our retail business, so many of our brands continue to do well. Brands like Black Label Bacon, Spam, Applegate, just a really good strength to so many brands on the retail side. Our food service business continues to perform well, really strong volume and top line performance. Our international business continues to recover and rebound across all fronts, whether it's in country, in China, some of our branded exports, and even our partnerships really starting to leverage some of the investments that we've made in Indonesia. We also talked about some of the headwinds in the business, but they're known headwinds. They're isolated headwinds when we think about some of the turkey impact, the planters, product disruption, and contract manufacturing. They're all known. They're all isolated. And really more of a top line impact because we didn't adjust our bottom line. We narrowed our guidance, but we maintained our midpoint.

And the other piece I'll add to that as well is, in addition, the transform and modernize initiative that we're undertaking is truly paying dividends for us at the moment. And so when we think about the little bit softer top line and not having the impact on the bottom line and being able to maintain that, that really speaks to the benefits that we're having from the savings that we're seeing from transform and modernize and also looking to the expanded margins that we're seeing, which is exactly what we communicated to you as we undertook this and communicated at Investor Day that we're taking on this initiative to really drive operating income for the company.

Maybe to go a little bit into like, call it the pain points maybe, but then at the same time it's just of short term nature. So to begin with planters, the business itself, I mean, you have the disruption at the Suffolk facility, but maybe you can talk a little bit about what you've been doing on the initiatives to drive brand innovation, the health of the brand, what you're seeing in customer repeat purchases, et cetera, just to kind of understand how the underlying business is actually going.

Yeah, it's a great question. And for us, the best way to think about this is this is a supply issue, not a demand issue. The work that we've done to really strengthen the planters brand has been nothing short of spectacular. So prior to the product disruption, the business was hitting on all cylinders. And when we think about what we talked about at time of acquisition, the investments that we knew we needed to make on the advertising front, the work that we've done on innovation, we've innovated in the legacy business introducing a sweet and spicy product, but more recently we had introduced, we've got some samples here, some flavored cashews. And not only did they perform well off the shelf, the most important thing is that they connected us with a new consumer, a younger consumer bringing them into the space. And really doing the same thing with another great innovation called planters nut duos. So it's a combination of different types of nuts and different types of flavors. Here we've got ranch flavored almonds, buffalo flavored cashews. The product is spectacular. And bringing innovation to this category is so absolutely important. And so while we're in the middle of this supply disruption, planters is such an important brand to this category that we've been able to maintain our space on the shelf and be in a very good position as we restore fill rates to get this business back on track rather quickly. So again, all the thesis for when we acquired the brand in terms of what we knew we could do to invest from an advertising innovation perspective, leverage the synergies on the C-Store side of the business in our food service channel, all of those things have come to fruition. And we know that we're going to get this back on track.

Yeah. And I'll just add that in addition to the innovation that Jim just talked about, we've also spent time truly investing in our facility to really ensure that we get our lines, upgrade our lines to where they need to be. But also in terms of the bags, I mean, initially when we acquired the business, there was a lot of canisters. And you think about how the consumers really want to get the purchase, the product, and now we have spent that money to invest in lines that get us stand up bags, right, in many different pack sizes, which truly speaks to us listening to the consumer and taking those insights to ensure we continue to evolve the brand and evolve our packaging in different ways.

Maybe just, Jacint, one follow-up as to the impact in the court of the financial impact that you had and what you're expecting into 4Q. I think you've mentioned 6C, 3C, last 3Q, another 3C and 4Q. Nothing to expect for 25. What's behind those 3C? Just maybe clarify a little bit the impact, where it's coming from.

Yes, and it's unfortunate. So certainly when we gave the guidance last quarter, we were at the very beginning stages of the disruption. And so we were too clearly too optimistic about how soon we'll get back up and running. And so as we got into it, we certainly realized it was going to be a little bit longer. So it's truly getting the production back up, which we believe for the fourth quarter will be primarily resolved from a production standpoint. Now when we think about getting fill rates back to where they need to be and getting everything back humming from a sales perspective, that will certainly take us into 25. But the production itself should be back up and running in Q4. And so that's what's truly behind the additional 3 cents that we talked about.

Okay, got it. Very clear. One other thing, obviously, and you've talked about it in your opening remarks, is the Turkey business, right? Obviously more commoditized. You've mentioned already, I think two quarters ago, a 15-cent impact here. Help us kind of reconcile how much is impacted so far. I think the 15 cents you said yesterday still hold for the year. But as you think about the business and the relevance of the business, what does the Turkey business bring to the table, to HOMEL? Why is it important?

Yeah, so you're correct. The 15 cents that we'd call 10 cents out at the beginning of the year, we refine that to 15 cents in Q1. That's played out the way that we expected it to. The important part of Turkey is it's an important protein in our portfolio. And when we think about the value-added opportunities in our business, Turkey is front and center. The work that we've done over the years with Lean Ground Turkey, and to really build out that item and that brand, the team has done an absolutely amazing job. The part that probably goes unnoticed is the effect or the impact that Turkey has in our food service business. And so whether we're thinking about sandwiches or center of the plate, Turkey plays a key role in our food service segment as well. So just across the spectrum, Turkey is an important protein that is not going away in our portfolio. The other thing that's important is that it's obviously very relevant with consumers and only going to become more so. When we think about the trends that are out there, especially with GLP-1 and what consumers are going to be thinking about and needing in terms of lean sources of protein, Turkey fits that bill in a big way. And so the consumer need, the consumer opportunity is real. The space and the place that it plays in our portfolio is significant. And so it is, it has been, is, and will continue to be an important part of our organization.

Okay, got it. And then just results related, one last one I wanted to follow up as well on yesterday. You still have on the top line relatively white 300 million move from the lower end to the higher end. So maybe talk about what's like as you think about it, what could drive that to the higher end, what are the potential headwinds that could turn that out to be more at the lower end?

I think the biggest thing, and Jacinth talked a little bit about it, is this ramp up in planters. And so the plant is fully operational. We continue to get better just about every day in terms of the throughput from the facility, being able to supplement that with our co-packer relationships really helps put us in a better supply situation. I've said it once, I'll say it a thousand times, this is not a demand issue. This is a supply issue. And so the faster we get supply up and running, the demand is there and that will allow us to perform even better. Our food service business continues to remain very strong and our international business again continues to recover and rebound. So overperformance there takes us to an even better place. But I think the important message in all of this is even as we've talked about some of the top line impact, the bottom line range was just narrowed with a midpoint that's maintained. And I think that speaks volumes to the fact that the underlying health of the business is strong. And really the business that we're controlling that's more value added is performing.

Yeah, I'd also add that the transform and modernize work that we're doing, so to the extent that we're one of the things we have been doing is accelerating some of the projects that we're doing to the extent we can. To drive more savings. So that's another area that could take us higher than to the high side. And that's another piece that's in play. And then the other piece is, you know, where does commodity markets land? That's always in play for us at any point in time.

Yeah, we'll come to the TNM transfer modernize in a second. Just real quick, food service, I don't want to go too deep because it's such an easy ride and it's been doing so well. So not too much to worry about. But if you think about the business and how you structure that, I mean, it's obviously been a growth driver. You've seen volume year to date nicely up. Pricing is always relatively easy for you, right, depending on how commodity markets go, how you need to pass through. But margins are very solid. It's a great business for you. So do you see opportunities to grow that? I mean, how can you expand that business, make it even more relevant, and not for shrinking the other stuff, but growing this? Probably

one clarification is I wouldn't call it easy, right? None of it's ever easy. It's always a lot of effort. But it's effort that our team has been really, really good at. And so this is a business that's been 30 years in the making. And it is a key part of it is the structure of the business. Having a direct selling organization that's front and center with key operators and helping them solve their pain points, create solutions for them has been paramount to our success. And so that doesn't change. And then when you complement that with an incredible product portfolio, the existing portfolio, but then the continuous innovation over time, one of the ones we talk a lot about is bacon one, right? And so to be able to allow operators to have bacon that appears to be cooked in the back of the house, put on the center of the plate, high quality, great tasting bacon, and eliminates the need for staff to cook the bacon, it eliminates the risk of bacon grease. Those are the things that we talk about when we say creating solutions and eliminating pain points. And we've got that in so many places throughout the portfolio and having a direct selling organization to execute against that's really important. And so when we think about the future, it's how do you do more of that? Right. And it's are we expanding our sales force? Absolutely. Are we accelerating innovation? Absolutely. Are we on the lookout for acquisition opportunities? Absolutely. You know, we think about the Fontanini acquisition, it's hard to believe now seven years ago. That was such a successful acquisition for us and really allowed us to leverage the power of our food service organization against an incredible product portfolio. And so finding ways to do that more often is going to allow us to continue to grow the business. So it's not easy, but it's very intentional. But it's on trend with what food service operators and distributors expect from us.

I'll just add that in addition to that differentiated value prop that Jim just mentioned is just also the diversity in terms of channels, in terms of how we go to market. So I know sometimes there is a question around, okay, you know, how is our QSR is doing and is that impacting us? Well, we don't just service QSR, right? The team also services there is the white tablecloth, there is QSR, but there is also the non-commercial channel. When we think about right K through K through K through 12, right? That's a space that we play. So we have in addition to the commercial piece, the non-commercial piece that makes it the portfolio more diverse in terms of the offering, but also in terms of the channels and how we go to market.

Yeah, that's very good. International, that's the last segment I wanted to talk about before going a little bit on the structure side. It's been weak and started to come back really fast over the last two quarters, very good operating income growth. I mean, obviously kind of like the strategy of going away from call it lower quality, lower margin commodity to higher margin profile sales is paying off. So as you think about the business as it evolves, what it used to be maybe pre-pandemic and then where it's heading towards now, tell me a little bit more about the opportunities there and what you're seeing in terms of like the need of investments and how you're seeing the Chinese consumer because there's always the question marks around that pretty large consumer. Yeah,

you know, as simple as international sounds, it's a complex business and we really think about it in three different buckets. So the first is our multinational businesses and that really would be our in-country business in China and Brazil, China being far larger, more meaningful to the organization. And you know, 23 was a bit of an anomaly, obviously in the China market, you know, we felt the impact both on retail and food service, but the team's done a great job recovering on our retail business. Again, new innovation, especially in the snacking area, continued growth in our spam brand there, not just the cans products, but single serve pouches. So much so that we're actually investing additional capacity to support that business. And then, you know, the other part of it is what we call partnerships. And when we think about longstanding partnership in the Philippines, in South Korea, where the spam brand just continues to grow very, very well. And then our most recent partnership is the acquisition that we've made or the investment that we've made in Indonesia with Garuda Foods, really the biggest international investment that we've made. So really three strong, well-developed partners and businesses that we didn't just write a check for. It's how do we bring our expertise and how do we leverage the expertise? And in the case of Garuda, how do we leverage their portfolio to think about snacking and entertaining in a different way on a global basis? And we're starting to see that play out. And then the last part is, you know, branded exports. So we export a lot of spam and skippy items that truly are value added. And we're seeing that business continue to grow as we further penetrate and develop markets that, you know, we're very strategic about. And so all three parts of that business are doing really well. Another part that impacted last year was there were some sales dollars and volume on commodity type items that flowed through our international business. And we haven't seen that this year because we've been able to manage our inventories better and sell them for a better return domestically.

And

so all of that adds up to the business being in a much, much better place and one that's set up to return to the trajectory it was on pre

-23. Okay. God. Very good. On the transform and modernization plan, so you clearly laid out all the investments needed in order to get to round about 250 million operating income gains. I think it was by the end of 25, beginning to 26, something like that. So how has this process evolved so far and what still needs to be done? What are you seeing on like the investment needs in order to complete it and call it the next 18 months?

No, I'll start off by saying this is for sure the biggest, most impactful initiative that the company has undertaken in its history. And it's going very well. As we talked about in investor day, the target is 250 million dollars of operating income by 2026. And we're well on our way. We talked about 24 being an investment year. That being said, we are already unlocking a lot of benefits, a lot of opportunities for the company in the different pillars that we laid out. The biggest piece being around the supply chain where 200 million dollars is related to the supply chain component. And so when we think about those pillars, we think about them in terms of plan, buy, make and move. And so that's the natural rule we continue to use as we give the update. But there is benefit that we're seeing in each of those areas. How do we think about what it should cost us when we're purchasing materials, whether that's direct or indirect? When we think about the planning perspective of our business, we have an -to-end solution that we're working through from a supply chain perspective. Think about it from the standpoint of integrated business planning. How do we get the right demand signal such that we can produce the right inventory, get it into the right warehouse, in the right position to get it to the customer, but also having the right supply so that we can manage the inventory to manage working capital, free up cash appropriately to invest, but also reduce our expenses appropriately. So those are some of the examples that we're already working through putting in that infrastructure. But in addition to that is really surrounding it and enabling it with data and analytics and technology to build infrastructure to ensure that that can also be sustained in addition to having the change management that's necessary to ensure the new ways of working that comes into play and making that stick throughout the organization. So there is a lot there and there is a lot going on in the organization and we're certainly excited to really get to Q4 where we can get a chance to give a more robust update on the initiative.

I think from a team member perspective, when you try to do something this big, it's how do you make sure that everybody's on board because you do need everybody rowing in the same direction. And there was never any question from our team members in terms of was this the right thing to do in their mind? And they saw it, they lived it, they worked with the systems and the processes that we had. The question is, how do you bring it to life? Right. And how do you really ingrain this in the culture? And the success that Jacinta is describing that we've seen in year one has been really, really important to get people to think not just it's the right thing to do, but in their heart, I know it's the right thing to do and I'm seeing the benefit and I want to do more and I want to do more faster. And so we're seeing that and experiencing that across the organization, which is really powerful as we think about the work that is yet to come still in 25 and 26 as we see the effect or the benefits ramp up. But it is, as Justin said, it's a big undertaking. But it is a necessary undertaking in terms of where we were, where we are today, and where we want to take this business and this company in the foreseeable

future. Okay. I mean, within that, just to quickly follow up on that, have you kind of seen maybe even more opportunities that could potentially take you beyond that target level of 250? And I mean, I would say maybe still early stage, but what are like the levers you're playing, right? Is it just optimizing on the production process? Is it supply chain? Is it maybe import SKU rationalization just to focus on the more profitable items? How should we think about it? What are like the still the pending opportunities that you're having?

I'm going to use one of Jim's terms. We're not going to spike the football at the moment and say it's going to be anything more. I'll give just one example, though, that we think about from a make perspective. We have a proprietary Hormel production system that we have now instituted. And think about showing up at a plant where everyone is doing the is really having the same procedures, right? And executing the processes exactly the same way with the same metrics every single time. And what that means, right? So having those standardized processes in each of the plants, that's what we have now. We're now starting to put in place and we have seen that in the plants that we have put that in place where it's now giving us better yield, freeing up capacity where we are now able to avoid capital deployment for areas we would have already deployed capital to, but also having us the ability or giving us the ability to repatriate some production that we have outsourced. So thinking about comands that we had been utilizing because we were capacity constrained and being able to bring that production back in house. So that's just one example of some of the benefits that we're seeing.

I would say nice try, Ben. I have to. But I think it is just what Justin described, right? There are those successes that we are seeing that give us that confidence that we're on track. And it's like anything of this magnitude. Some of the assumptions where we thought you were going to achieve this, well maybe that's not as much, or you thought you were going to achieve this and you're over delivering, that's going to happen throughout the process. The biggest thing is as the organization is seeing this success, that's where the momentum builds. That's where the buy-in happens. And it's how do we do more faster? And that's a really good place for us to be.

Got it. In the interest of time, just two more topics. So one, and it's kind of a theme we've had, is a lot of talking about the strength or the lack of strength of the consumer. So I just wanted to get maybe your view because it feels weird that particularly in retail where you would think people down trade from food service into retail, and then within retail maybe trade down, that's where you would have the stronger foothold because of the portfolio and then food service, but it's exactly the opposite around. So maybe tell us a little bit about what you're seeing in terms of the health of the consumer right now within the different segments and how you're positioned to potentially go through the next couple of months that look a little softer for some. Yeah,

I don't know that our outlook on the consumer is probably all that much different than some of the other companies that you've heard. I mean there's obviously an inflationary factor, an inflationary fatigue that even all of us as consumers are feeling. But what that means to us is how do we really create value? And so the consumer who is being now more intentional, how do we create the value for them that when they're showing up at the shelf we are creating value for them in a way that goes beyond just price? So they're showing up being intentional, thinking about individual maybe meal events, meal solutions. And so it isn't just about lowering the price. It's how are we supporting our advertising to really create this awareness for consumer about maybe you can extend a meal with some of our more convenient meal and protein items. So it's all of those things as they come together. It's really important. I think the conversations really tend to focus just so much on price and promotion. But really thinking about how important advertising can be in talking to the consumer still, how important innovation is. Innovation is still really, really important in terms of drawing the consumer to those categories. And that's what we've spent a lot of time and effort on. And we already talked about the planters innovations, which are spectacular. But when we think about bacon, bacon is a category for us that has continued to do exceptionally well. And one of the products that we just announced this week is a collaboration with Cinnamon Toast Crunch. So black label bacon, Cinnamon Toast Crunch. It's something exciting, new and different in a category that consumers are shopping on a regular basis. And so how do you make it more exciting? And they think we're doing that. We talked a little bit already about spam. We introduced our spam Korean flavor. It's a permanent variety. I think it's our 12th permanent variety. But it's something new and different. And so really our focus is not just talking about price and promotional activity. It's making sure that we're supporting it with the right level of advertising to educate, but then also creating innovation that allows it to be exciting.

Got it. Last one I had, which isn't your favorite topic, capital allocation. So you still have a relatively large chunk for CapEx left for the year in order to get to the, I think, at roughly 280 million. Nothing outrageous, probably very similar as last year. But as you think about like CapEx normalized, that's like kind of the level we should also assume go forward. And what are like kind of the current strategic focuses within that CapEx?

Yeah, so yes, the cadence is consistent. So there isn't anything in this quarter that's just significant in terms of the spending. So there aren't large chunks of any particular projects. So there is a whole host of projects this quarter that will get us to this 280 million dollars that we are targeting for the year. And, you know, that's the level that we've been over the last couple of years now going forward. I don't know if that's going to be the number. We do go through a robust process every year where it's a bottoms up roll up of, okay, what do we need to spend based on our maintenance expenses for the plants and other projects? And so that's a thought process we go through every year. In terms of our capital allocation process, that's not changing. It's the same as we think about it. You know, what's required, what's strategic, what's opportunistic, and that's the cadence in which we'll think about deploying capital. So, you know, what I'll say is we continue to generate very strong cash flow. So it gives us optionality. And where we sit today with our leverage ratio is pretty good. We're sitting at 1.8 times EBITDA at the moment. So if there is something compelling that shows up, we have the option to go out and lever up if we wanted to. But we also have enough cash to do things that we would like to do that we think is compelling and driving value for our shareholder. Now in terms of buybacks, I know that I get that question a lot as well. I was about to ask that question. I guess. Why don't we do more buybacks? You know, given our structure, right, with 47 or so percent of our shares being held by our one major investor, the Hormel Food Foundation and the trust, we don't have the same kind of lever. So our lever is dividends, and we're committed to continuing to pay dividends and having dividends grow. And that's really the true lever for us. I mean, we pay out about almost 70 percent of our cash is paid out in dividends each year. So we'll continue to pay dividends and we're committed to dividends growth as well.

Yeah, and I think an important part of that conversation goes back to transform and modernize the example that, you know, Jacinth gave on capital avoidance, right? I can think specifically of a couple of projects where we probably would have been thinking about some significant investments in the not too distant future. But because of the Hormel production system, we've been able to unlock capacity and meaningful capacity that now gives the sales team license to go out and sell very strategic value added products without having to layer in additional capital. So, you know, the story is this all comes together. You can see why we're why we're so excited about the position of the company. You know, when we think about the strength of the underlying business, it's really, really strong, very strong performance by a number of retail brands, continued strength and food service, really nice recovery and rebound in our international business. It's compounding and building effect of what's happening with with transform and modernize. And we'll get through the headwinds that are known and they're isolated. The bigger part of what's so exciting for us and the level of optimism that you hopefully can sense is really the business that is underneath it and that matters is doing really well. I guess that's a wrap. Well,

thank you very much, Jim Jacinth. Thanks for being on stage and see you next year. Great. Thank you.